McCain and Falwell: BFF

As everyone recalls, back in 2000 when John McCain was seeking the Republican nomination, he delivered a speech in which he infamously called Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell’ “agents of intolerance.”  Then, in 2006, as he was gearing up to make another run for the nomination, he suddenly changed his tune and even agreed to deliver the commencement address at Falwell’s Liberty University.  

It was assumed that this was little more than crass political pandering on McCain’s part, but apparently McCain and Falwell struck up a friendship that endures to this day – or at least one that McCain finds politically valuable, judging by this AP article on what McCain keeps in his Senate office:

For all of the randomness, the office contents seem to fit together, with one jarring exception. There is only one glad-handing political photo in the office, and it is of McCain posing with the late Rev. Jerry Falwell and Falwell’s wife, Macel, in 2006. The inscription to McCain from televangelist Falwell reads: “You are a great American, a national treasure and I am glad to say my good friend.”